Gas leak prompts shelter in place at SF Hall of Justice, nearby offices

Crews worked to shut off a gas leak at Seventh and Bryant streets Thursday morning in San Francisco.

Photo: San Francisco Fire Department /

Construction workers struck an underground natural gas main Thursday outside San Francisco’s Hall of Justice, prompting an order for workers inside nearby buildings to shelter in place while crews plugged the leak.

Contractors doing street work hit the two-inch Pacific Gas & Electric Co. pipe at Seventh and Bryant streets around 10:05 a.m., according to the San Francisco Fire Department.

PG&E crews responded to the scene and shut off the gas around 10:40 a.m. No one was injured.

The incident prompted an order to shelter in place inside the Hall of Justice, placing the morning’s business inside the courts and other offices briefly on hold, officials said.

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PG&E was looking into whether the workers had called 811 to identify any possible gas lines underground where they were working.

The ruptured gas line comes two weeks after a construction workers hit a gas line in the city’s Richmond District, causing a massive explosion that destroyed a nearby business and several buildings. No one was injured in that incident.

Evan Sernoffsky is a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle specializing in criminal justice, crime and breaking news. He’s covered some of the biggest Bay Area news stories in recent memory, including wildfires, mass shootings and criminal justice reform efforts in San Francisco. He has given a voice to victims in some of the region’s biggest tragedies, carefully putting himself in challenging situations to make sure their stories are told. He works out of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice where he keeps watch on the city’s courts and hits the streets to expose the darker side of a city undergoing rapid change. He moved to the Bay Area from Oregon where he grew up and worked as a journalist for several years.